Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Feng Shui and P.M.T.

Article By Bernadette Praske
Copyright Bernadette Praske

Harmonising the Elements
Feng Shui, a science, a diviner’s art form, a landscaping of time, space and the relationship between things within this milieu.

Observations and sensings of the feng shui practitioner are cast upon the ‘where, how and when’ of events, places and people, ministering as much to the unseen as the seen.

A practice of expedient asthetics, promoting multi-environmental (inner and outer) order, interactive harmony and congeniality.

This age old reference point system can have effective applicability to modern day activities, events and experiences. The article below is using such perception to divine the normally problematic manifestations of PMS.

Expanding the experience of such states, they appear even potentially useful, as opposed to merely pathological.

In the tradition of Feng Shui (literal translation – ‘Wind and Water’) it is believed that over time, a structure, it’s walls, floors and furniture, absorbs different energies from the surrounding and internal environments and that the atmosphere within a building can transform, stagnate, congest or consume, for example. The ambience or feel of an environment can be palpable. This atmosphere may also be undetectable by the normal senses, yet still affect our energies, behaviours, moods and therefore vitality, surreptitiously.

A Feng Shui ritual to cleanse a building (notably at the onset of residence or habitation but also a process amenable to any time frame), consists of sprinkling sea salt around the perimeter, walking clockwise or anti-clockwise starting at your front door. Sea salt purifies by absorbing ‘disturbing’ Qi (Chi), inferred to above. Then, walk in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction around the perimeter of your building three times, ringing a wind chime gently, with the intent that the chimes’ resonance will break up any disturbing Qi. The chimes should be rinsed in water between each circling of the building.

Women are advised not to do this if they are pregnant or menstruating, as at these times, they are more sensitive to energetic changes. It’s believed that these ‘energetic changes’ are too disturbing to a woman who is, at that time, extremely sensitive and susceptible to stimuli of many natures.

Having suffered varying levels and styles of PMT since having my children I have often pondered the cause of this black cloud with many faces. What intrigues me most is the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt variance in PMT symptoms and their severity from one month to another. Indeed, what qualifies as PMT, while identifying broadly with a range of symptoms and emotional states is often an intensely individualized experience each month.

If we accept that we are the building and that our interactions with others lead to absorption of different energies or produce different emotional states and responses - short term and long term interactions may trigger short term emotional states or continue feed an underlying long term emotional state.

My personal experience during a recent time of PMT, was a heaviness in my feet and abdomen. My emotional state was extreme sensitivity to all the feelings passing through me. Negative and Positive. I cried because I love people, I cried for feelings of deep restriction in my life and at chaos created in my life by others. As I sit writing now the same issues are in my life however I do not feel them as intensely. I take them just as seriously but do not feel the extreme and deep emotional state I accessed during that time.

I have often wondered whether difficult or seemingly unresolvable matters not dealt with “come to get me” at PMT time. It is as if the premenstrual and indeed menstrual experience is a canvas upon which the various physical and emotional states spanning the whole cycle are painted, ala personal history revisiting. It seems they will not be ignored or silenced.

It’s possible that different PMT states and sensitivities reflect the energetic charge or disharmony emanating from various underlying processes. In Feng Shui terms, a Qi imbalance. These may have arisen during the preceding month or chronic emotional states that we gain access to at this extremely sensitive time, but are difficult to access at other times. We may not be able to name them, however.

If, according to Feng Shui, at the time of menstruation, women are more sensitive to energetic changes, then it is possible that the few days preceding this period would be a time of increasing sensitivity to both inner and outer landscapes. This perhaps accounts for a preponderance of heaviness in my body, aches, impatience and frustration as well as a generally pessimistic outlook.

In Chinese thought, it is believed our entire environment is alive with Qi, the emanation of which, is derived from the interactions of inherent forces known as Yin and Yang.

If we transfer this to our internal landscape we see that the time of PMT is one of increasing sensitivity to the Yin/Yang imbalance or disharmony in our emotional lives.

( Bernadette Praske)

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